In terms of definition, sure, but it’s not the same at all.
I’ve switched mains early in SL. If reputation was the main requirement for flying, I’d be massively behind and my new main would need to slog through a whole host of world quests and callings and I’d still be behind, even through grinding this content that has nothing to do with endgame.
As it stands I’m about 5 renown behind despite dinging 60 start of this week, because I’ve earned it entirely through playing PvP content. That’s the difference. I can play content I like and earn the pathfinder requirement. With rep you had to do chorish content that has little to do with endgame
I mean champs of Azeroth and tortollans offered people few if any reason to grind them on their own. You grinded them simply because you had to. So that was players doing world quests for these factions for no reason other than to get PF. Totally different situation with renown.
So even if according to the dictionary the terms mean the same, it doesn’t mean mechanically they work the same in the game at all. To be in a position where you won’t have enough renown, you’d have to be doing… nothing, because everything has a chance to award it until you’re caught up. So people have no reason to worry unless they fit into that group.
As said I’ve swapped mains later into S1 and I’m nearly caught up in my first week at max. By next week I’ll be caught up, it is that easy to earn. And the best part is it’s in doing content I want to do rather than mandatory chore rubbish.
The only thing we know so far is that flying will be tied to renown.
There is no detail about the implementation and the best can be said to wait until such information is released.
But defending it as “There is no patchfinder” does not mean things will just flow naturally and Blizzard/Ion suddenly has a good faith of heart to give you flying for free.
Early switching in an expansion is nothing. However, if you have played a characters heavily for months, then is where the problem comes. Are you willing to invest the same amount of effort again for another class or spec? Personally, I won’t
Well it’s no worse than pathfinder, and infinitely better imo. And I prefer it to money, because despite the gold being attainable, I’d rather not feel like having money on every single char is required to unlock flying individually as opposed to simply doing “content” on a char of choice and all my Alts now have it.
I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s not pathfinder, it is, but it’s a vastly improved version. The question of gold Vs Achi is a matter of preference. I just happen to prefer the Achi version because then Alts are sorted straight up and my gold isn’t wasted further. I mean with callings awarding 2k each the price of flying would have to be ten times what it used to be for it to mean anything at all.
You don’t know it is “vastly improved” until Blizzard releases the implementation details.
What if the tied to renown means only the character can fly with the renown progression. What if an account-wide ability to fly is asking players to reach certain level and upgrades in all covenants. Will it be an improvement or just same pile of BS like BFA?
Questing in WoW is extremely boring solo content. Unlike modern RPGs that have lots of story branches that allow the player to get involved and make decisions, everything is linear in WoW. Blizzard should take a look at Disco Elysium or Detroit: Become Human for some inspiration on how to design good interactive stories. Those titles are fairly new games, but this is something that even much older games already accomplished. Baldur’s Gate and Planescape Torment, for example, are some old RPGs that were published way before the development of WoW even started. WoW’s questing feature was already kind of outdated from the very beginning, and Blizzard never bothered to significantly improve it.
I guess some people do like WoW’s crude quests gameplay loop (get quest, kill 10 mobs, run back, get reward), and if that content is cheap to produce, then I have absolutely no problem with Blizzard continuing to add that type of content to each new expansion.
BUT: lots of people are bored out of their skulls by this mindless, dull, outdated type of gameplay. Blizz should make it completely optional.
One thing Diablo 3 did really well was its Story and Adventure mode. Shadowland’s “Threads of Fate” feature is clearly inspired by D3’s Adventure Mode, but it’s too lackluster because it only allows the player to skip some quests (it only allows skipping the 4 zone campaigns, but not the Shadowlands intro, Thorghast, Maw, and covenant campaigns). In Diablo 3, Adventure mode allows the player to COMPLETELY ignore the story and jump straight into the fun part of the game. And AFAIK it’s unlocked from the start; the player isn’t forced to complete the story even once.
@Tifa this is what i mean. I am not talking about the grind for renown / reputation
You don’t know it is “vastly improved” until Blizzard releases the implementation details. What if the tied to renown means only the character can fly with the renown progression. What if an account-wide ability to fly is asking players to reach certain level and upgrades in all covenants. Will it be an improvement or just same pile of BS like BFA?
In that case it is what it is. Before pathfinder came out flying was also tied to the character who purchased it. There will most likely be an achiev like “reach renown 20” which are account wide though.
Im just going from the conversations we know, which is that it will be like pathfinder, but tied to renown
This tells me it will be alt unlocked. There’s no reason to assume otherwise. If it was indeed alt specific, then that would catapult it into the badlands for me, but working off renown instead of rep is already an improvement as far as I can see given its much easier and fluid to obtain than rep. So yeah, I can’t say for sure but unless they throw a curve ball and decide to alt lock it, it will be better I predict.
WoW has far more to it than just quests. The other parts are far more enjoyable.
It is more of an RPG evolved, into something more than just a questline.
Then are the current Developers trying to take it back to being just an RPG?
Also, some people keep saying that there has “never been a time in wow where you didn’t have to do quests.” But there has been. Wrath of the Lich King!
In Wrath of the Lich King, you did not have to do any quests. I even levelled up a DK 2 weeks before the launch of Cataclysm. I took him through all the dungeons, did some PvP, and took him in to face the Lich King raid. Without doing any quests past what was needed to get out of the DK only zone.
I levelled a few characters in Lich King, without doing any quests. We could fly for a price of gold. We could do whatever we wanted in the game without needing to touch any of the parts of the game which we didn’t want to do.
In Wrath of the Lich King, the Developers gave the game to the players and said “Do whatever you like, it is YOUR GAME!” The story was delivered in the dungeons.
But now, they are saying “It is our game, you pay us to play it, and we dictate how you should enjoy it.”